science

The Psychology of the Occult

The Psychology of the Occult is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Psychology of the Occult rather than just read about it. In short: The Psychology of the Occult is a 1952 skeptical book on the paranormal by psychologist D. H.

Key takeaways

The Psychology of the Occult belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Psychology of the Occult to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Psychology of the Occult from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Psychology of the Occult is a 1952 skeptical book on the paranormal by psychologist D. H. Rawcliffe. It was later published as Illusions and Delusions of the Supernatural and the Occult (1959) and Occult and Supernatural Phenomena (1988) by Dover Publications. Biologist Julian Huxley wrote a foreword to the book.

Content The book takes influence from the works of Frank Podmore, Joseph Jastrow and Ivor Lloyd Tuckett dealing with the "fallacies underlying psychical research". Rawcliffe critically examines claims of the occult, parapsychology and spiritualism concluding that they are best explained by psychological factors such as hallucination, hysteria, neurosis and suggestion as well as "delusion, fraud, prestidigitation, and limitless credulity." Rawcliffe found possible naturalistic explanations for all parapsychological experiments he investigated, noting that there is no scientific evidence for any paranormal power. He suggested that many of the results from ESP experiments can be explained by what he termed endophasic enneurosis (unconscious whispering). The book offers rational explanations for diverse phenomena such as automatic writing, dowsing, fire-walking, lycanthropy and stigmata.

Reception Daniel Loxton has described the book as an important skeptical work written many years before the founding of CSICOP. He noted that "Much as Michael Shermer has done in recent decades, Rawcliffe attempted not merely to debunk these claims, but to explain the underlying psychology of why people believe weird things."

See also Why People Believe Weird Things

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Psychology of the Occult

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Psychology of the Occult claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Psychology of the Occult before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Psychology of the Occult ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Psychology of the Occult

In research: The Psychology of the Occult appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Psychology of the Occult in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Psychology of the Occult is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1952 non-fiction books, Anomalistic psychology, Books about the occult, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Psychology of the Occult outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “The Psychology of the Occult” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study The Psychology of the Occult in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Psychology of the Occult means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Psychology of the Occult out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Psychology of the Occult in simple terms?

The Psychology of the Occult is a 1952 skeptical book on the paranormal by psychologist D. H.

Why does The Psychology of the Occult matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Psychology of the Occult?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Psychology of the Occult.